Love the One You're With (16 page)

But she couldn't
ever
remember laughing this much with Greg, or so easily sharing every thought that came into her head, no matter how random.

Not even at the beginning.

Jake held out a bite of dessert across the table, and she hesitated before taking it, her eyes scanning the room, automatically wondering how the gesture might be interpreted. Too
interested? Too clichéd?

His gaze shadowed briefly. “There's no one here, Grace. Just me.”

“Yeah, I seem to remember we've both played
that
line before, only to have the private moment all over the blogosphere,” she said before neatly cleaning the bite of torte off the fork.

“Not all private moments,” he said, taking a bite for himself. “Neither one of us has made those kisses public. Why do you think that is?”

“Because we agreed not to?”

“Try again.”

Because it's too special
.

But she didn't say it out loud. She didn't want to be wrong. Not about this.

“Because it was real,” he said. “We may be trying to trip each other up all over the place these past few weeks, but even though we both want to win, we know some things are sacred.”

Then why haven't you tried to take it
beyond
kissing?
1.0 wanted to ask.

Jake had definitely not been beating down her door to get into her pants. Which was polite, and gentlemanly, and totally depressing.

Just
once
she wanted to be that woman that drove men crazy. She wanted to be the irresistible sexy one, not the nice, classy one.

She'd told that to Greg once. She'd had one too many glasses of chardonnay and confessed that she sometimes she wished her life was just a little bit messy, the sex something other than vanilla.

He'd just given her a small smile before taking away her wineglass and tucking her into bed.

The next morning she continued being the one whom people consulted about bridal shower gifts and who received lovely but generic jewelry for her birthday.

“You like beer?” Jake asked.

“What?” Grace asked, not at all following his train of thought.

“There's a brewery up the road. They give tours and have a nice little tasting area.”

“You're inviting me to a
brewery
tour?”

Jake laughed. “You can say no, Grace.”

“No! I mean yes! Yes, I'd like that.”

“Yeah?”

She shrugged. “I mean, don't expect me to wow the tour guide with all my beer knowledge, or buy a case or anything, but yeah … that sounds fun.”

His mouth tilted up as he signaled for the check. “I bet nobody's ever asked you to play hooky before, huh?”

The playful question was too close to the thoughts that had been spiraling through her mind just seconds before, and she heard herself answering too seriously.

“Nobody has. And I like it.”

He looked at her then, really looked at her, his eyes understanding.

“Don't look at me like that,” she said, trying to break the moment. “I'm so not having sex with you just because you take me to some rinky-dink beer tour.”

The cocky grin returned immediately. “I don't recall asking, Ms. Brighton, but believe me, this little thing we have will end with us in bed one way or the other.”

Grace felt her heart drop to her stomach before it soared back up and lodged in her throat.

“You think so?” She was trying for coy, but instead it came out sultry.

He stood and extended a hand for hers. “Count on it.”

Though they'd never explicitly talked about it, neither one of them wrote about that day in the stairwell.

The lunch, the brewery tour … the casual night that had followed, with them sharing a pitcher of beer and playing pool.

Nobody knew about it.

It was theirs alone, and even though 2.0 was pissed about it, Grace tucked it away in a little part of her labeled
Happy Memories
.

Not that the shenanigans on the website had ceased. There were more followers than ever, their reader base ever more vocal. In an effort to appease their “fans,” Grace and Jake did lunch together more regularly, often followed by lingering coffee breaks in the afternoon.

More often than not, they had an audience of some kind.

More often than not, Grace forgot about the audience.

And she suspected he did too.

Which was not to say they were shirking their duties. They took plenty of good-natured swipes at each other on the website. He'd sent her a picture of him in his briefs, knowing full well she'd put it on the website.

She had.

And when she'd “accidentally” flashed her thigh when getting up from a booth at a local restaurant, she'd known he'd rant on the blog about how it was the oldest trick in the female playbook.

Neither of them had spoken about his threat/promise about them sleeping together. But it was there, between them. Looming closer.

And despite the fact that she still adamantly waved her six-month sabbatical in Julie and Riley's faces whenever they tentatively suggested she try going on a real date, she was no longer sure that Jake was wrong.

It was time to have a little talk with 2.0 about the rules.

Maybe sex with Jake would be a step forward in her recovery, but 2.0 was having none of
it.

And since the war between Grace 1.0 and 2.0 took up most of her mental energy, she never saw the email from Camille coming.

Grace numbly reread the email. Knew what it meant.

At the end of the month, there'd be no more Jake. She could refocus on Grace 2.0 without the distraction of a certain sexy journalist.

She could simultaneously secure her reputation as an expert on men while going back to dodging them completely in her personal life.

It was the perfect ending to her perfect plan.

And it sounded awful.

“What do you mean, I'm off the story?”

“You're not off the story. We've just switched the objective a bit.”

“You said I'd write five articles. I've only written two.”

Alex Cassidy slowly tapped a pen on his desk as he studied Jake. “Two
print
articles, but the online component has monopolized all of your time for over two months. You've put in more than enough legwork, and I couldn't be happier with the results.”

Well, I'm glad
someone's
happy
.

In truth, Jake knew he
should
be happy. This meant he could get back to writing his own story ideas instead of appeasing the higher-ups. It meant that at the end of the month he'd be able to go to Starbucks and grab something to eat without creating a firestorm in the office.

It meant he could get back to dating women for fun instead of for work.

And yet he still wanted to punch something.

“Why don't you just come out and ask?” Cassidy asked, watching him with an amused look on his face.

“Ask what?” Jake grumbled.

“How soon until you can start the Travel gig now that you're wrapping this up.”

Jake's mind went temporarily blank before reality crashed down.

Well, holy hell …

Somehow he'd temporarily forgotten all about their initial agreement.

It was really happening. He was going to live abroad. See the world.

Get rid of the damn itch between his shoulder blades.

Which … come to think of it, he hadn't noticed the itch or the restless feeling in weeks. But this travel position was still the opportunity of a lifetime.

“How soon?” he asked Cassidy.

His boss gave a sly smile. “I'm working on it. Just wrap this thing up with the
Stiletto
woman, and I think you'll like what I've got in the works.”

The Stiletto woman
. It didn't even remotely do Grace justice.

“Aha,” Cassidy said, tossing his pen down on the desk triumphantly. “I knew it.”

“Don't,” Jake said with a glare. “Just don't.”

His boss ignored him. “I thought Cole was full of shit when he said he thought there was more going on between you than just a little good-natured website banter. But here you are looking like I just took away your puppy. Or should I say … your
girlfriend
.”

“She's not my girlfriend.”

“You want her to be.”

Jake opened his mouth to refute it. That was nuts. Jake Malone wasn't the settling-down kind of guy. Not yet, anyway. He'd always imagined he had several more years of playing the field before he'd get nipped by the white-picket-fence bug.

Although Grace wasn't a white-picket-fence kind of girl. She was more a gated-community-and-penthouse kind of girl. He tried to picture her with her teetering high heels and sleek hair twists in the casual chaos that was the Malone living room back in Wisconsin.

She wouldn't last a day under his sisters' prying scrutiny or his dad's nonstop Packers talk or his mom's insistence that she should really just try a little Wisconsin cheese on her toast. And her salad. And her apple pie.

“Grace and I are mismatched.”

“That's not what our readers say,” Cassidy said, turning around his monitor and gesturing to the damned website. Jake barely glanced at it. The latest poll had 92 percent of readers thinking he and Grace had already slept together.

He wondered if the 92 percent had any bright ideas on how he could make that a reality.

“How much time do I have?” Jake asked.

“To get Grace into bed?”

Yes
. “No, I mean you said you wanted me to wrap up this saga on the website before you and Camille put a new couple up for cyberspace to analyze. How much longer do Grace and I have to keep this up?”

“Just till the end of the month. Then you and Grace will both write a farewell piece, and we'll introduce the next round of HeSaidSheSaid. And you'll be in Singapore or Cape Town or wherever you wanna be.”

Jake did a quick mental calculation. The end of the month gave him just over twenty days. Twenty days to …

Well, he didn't know what exactly. But he knew one thing.

He and Grace Brighton weren't even close to over.

* * *

“He wants to go to dinner.”

Riley, Emma, and Julie immediately ended their debate over which bottle of wine to order and stared at her.

“Who?” Julie asked.

Emma pinched her arm. “Jake, obviously.”

“What do you mean,
obviously
? Camille said they just had to keep up the casual flirty stuff for a couple more weeks and then they're done. Now they have to go on a date?” Riley demanded.

“I'm betting they don't
have
to,” Emma said coyly.

Grace fiddled with her fork. It was the first time Emma had tagged along for one of these little Love and Relationships after-work outings. Julie had suggested they hit up their favorite wine bar, and inviting Emma along had felt completely natural. Their threesome had officially become a foursome, and Grace was finding she didn't mind at all.

Except Emma Sinclair did seem to be somewhat of a mind reader, and
that
was proving to be a bit inconvenient at the moment.

“Wonder what his angle is,” Julie mused as she perused the menu. “You want us to tag along? Do a scan for hidden cameras,
Oxford
spies, that kind of thing?”

“I don't think it's like that,” Grace said tentatively. “His text seemed … straightforward. Genuine.”

“Please,” Riley said. “Like you can tell over text. Lemme see.” She held out her hand expectantly, and Grace handed over her phone. She might as well get a second opinion.

“ ‘Dinner? Just us,' ” Riley read out loud. She frowned. “Huh.”

“Right? Is it a trap?”

“No,” Emma said, at the same time as Riley said, “Yes.”

“He's messing with her,” Riley said emphatically. “They haven't had any time together that hasn't been documented and analyzed. Why start now?”

Grace pretended sudden fascination with the wine list, lifting it to cover her face. Two seconds later, Julie batted it out of the way. “Graaaace …”

She cleared her throat. “We, um, we
may
have sort of snuck away and had lunch one day.”

“What do you mean, you
snuck away
?”

“It was that day when he was supposed to be at Lucky's …”

Julie's eyes went wide. “The day you ‘went to the bathroom' and never came back?”

“Sort of, yeah. We were both trying to sneak away unnoticed in the stairwell and then suddenly we were at lunch. Together. In Brooklyn.”

“You went all the way to Brooklyn just for lunch?”

“Well, it sort of turned into a thing.…”

Riley cooed in delight. “You guys did the nasty in the restaurant bathroom, didn't you? How was it?”

Julie stared at Riley in fascination. “Sometimes I think your rep as
Stiletto
's sexpert is going to your head. Why would that be your first assumption?” Then she glanced at Grace. “
Did
you do it in the bathroom?”